Mario
Mario is the main protagonist of the Super Mario series and the legendary mascot of Nintendo. Mario is an Italian plumber who often uses his combat abilities to protect the usually peaceful Mushroom Kingdom from enemies like Bowser, Bowser Jr. and Fawful. However when not rescuing his friends (Peach) and family (Luigi) from Bowser Mario likes to participate in sporting events and even works as a doctor in the Dr. Mario games. Creation Mario was created by Shigeru Miyamato after Nintendo lost the license to use the Popeye universe as the base of their video games. Mario replaced Popeye and first appeared in a Donkey Kong arcade game where he was named Jump Man. Jump Man was changed to Mario after an employee at NYC pointed out the physical similarities between Jump Man and Nintendo's landlord Mario Segale. In animation In contrast to Mario's many appearances in video games, he has had very few animated appearances-only three cartoons starring him have been made, all by DIC Entertainment: *The Super Mario Bros. Super Show (1989): Based off of Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2. Each episode consisted of two live-action segments and one animated segment. Mario and Luigi were plumbers living in Brooklyn who accidentally went through a pipe to the Mushroom Kingdom, where they became heroes. The main characters were Mario (obviously), Luigi, Peach (who was called Princess Toadstool back then), and Toad, against Bowser (who was called King Koopa back then, and was much different than his modern self). The live-action segments only starred Mario and Luigi, although they had various guest stars from episode to episode. On occasion there would also be a Zelda segment starring Link, who had even less of an animated career. *The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 (1990): Based off of, as might be obvious, Super Mario Bros. 3. The main characters from the Super Mario Bros. Super Show all returned, along with the Koopalings: Cheatsy, Bully, Kootie-Pie, Big Mouth, Kooky, Hip and Hop (the names would not be changed until later). This show consisted of only two segments per episode, and both were animated. Out of all three Mario cartoons, this one most resembled the games. The last thing worth noting is that the Mario characters going into the "real world" that the brothers came from was a common theme, to the point that one episode involved the Koopalings trying to take it over. *Super Mario World (1991): Based off of, as should be obvious, Super Mario World. Once again, the main characters stayed, except for one: Toad was replaced with Yoshi, introduced in the game of the same name. There was also a caveboy character named Oogtar, who to date has not appeared in anything else. The show took place in "Dinosaur Land" instead of the Mushroom Kingdom. The episode layout was further reduced to only one Mario segment and was combined with the final season of Captain N: The Game Master (another Nintendo cartoon, featuring practically every Nintendo game outside of Mario). The "real world" theme from The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 was reduced to only references. Unfortunately, after the release of the live-action Super Mario Bros. movie in 1993, Nintendo pulled the plug on any future licensing of their mascot. The closest he's been to being animated since then are the cutscenes in the infamously terrible Hotel Mario. Trivia *Mario's original name was Jump Man. *Bowser has helped Mario on at least two occasions one was in Mario and Luigi: Bowser's inside story where you play as Mario, Luigi and Bowser and in Super Mario Sluggers where Wario sent a Bullet Bill at Mario and Bowser deflected it just for the sake of hitting Wario with it. *Mario and Luigi's last names are actually Mario. *A Mario statue made out of wax stands in the Hollywood wax museum. This is currently the only wax statue of a video game character. *Shugeru Miyamato drew Mario with a cap because he found it difficult to draw hair. He also drew him with a moustache because it was easier to see than a mouth in the crude video game resolution back then. *Mario is older than Luigi. *Mario has known Yoshi since he (Mario) was a baby. Category:Super Mario bros Category:Video game character Category:Cartoon character Category:Human Category:male Category:plumber Category:Super smash bros. Category:characters who have changed their names Category:Mascot Category:Leader